A Reading of World Book Day

With the hump of World Book Day disappearing over the horizon, here’s a little insight into what that looks like if you’re spinning a few too many plates.

An overall theme is decided and a plan of activities put together for the week. The department know that reading for pleasure isn’t cutting it any more - just reading at all is the message.

Our Head of Key Stage 3 English has been grafting for a year embedding a whole school reading program. Students compile and share presentations of books they’ve read and recommendations. Reading is incentivised. Books read = house points. Everyone likes points.

As the team collates the number of books read by their classes, something looks off on the tracker. Some students are reporting books read in the hundreds! A roaring success?! No, some are treating reading as if it’s gameified and optimising high scores is the goal. Conversations with individuals ensue.

A presentation to the parent community is arranged and emails are sent out. The venue is a 700 seat theatre. A lot of time is spent on slides (research has been carried out!). The presentation goes mostly without a hitch, even the clicker works. There are welcome questions at the end about slides being shared (people want to read it again!). All eight attendees seem to be on board with the message. An email from the marketing team comes in requesting a video to be made of the presentation for social media - too many emails go out to the parent community and they’re often unread…

The week culminates in the inevitable ‘dress up as your favourite book character’ day. This is met with gusto by the English team and most of Y7. The day also clashes with ‘House Fridays’. Most come to school in house T shirts.

Planning weeks like this feels sometimes like there should be more immediate payoff - a revolution in reading habits or a glut of library withdrawals. It’s rarely the case and slightly at odds with what reading actually entails; quiet moments of focus that aren’t always easily measurable.

The intent here is to develop sustainable reading habits over time which move beyond incentivisation and counter our students’ attention spans dwindling to micron-thickness. Rather than making World Book Day the time to promote reading, we’ve moved toward using it to recognise what’s been sustained across the year.